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Meat plant scandal has bipartisan tinge

August 17, 2008 — Say one thing about the Mississippi meat plant scandal: In an era when it’s said that Democrats and Republicans just can’t get along, this affair has proven that a lot of bipartisan business still gets done at certain levels.

In Mississippi, the story of an economic development scheme gone badly wrong has been mostly a headache for Democrats. It has put a dark cloud over the head of former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, in a year when he’s challenging U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and hoping to catch the same fire which propelled Democrat Travis Childers to victory in a special congressional election earlier this year.

In Georgia, where the three businessmen who last week pleaded guilty to charges connected to the scandal reside, the story has more of a Republican tinge because of their connections back home. It isn’t clear that either party gets the rap for the fiasco, but it has left politicians and business people uneasy in both states.

In separate agreements announced last week, Robert Moultrie, chairman and CEO of the Facility Group, and Nixon Cawood, the president and COO, pleaded guilty to making a $25,000 payment to Musgrove’s 2003 re-election campaign (which he lost to Republican Haley Barbour) with the intention of gaining advantage for their company, which had won a contract to design and build a beef processing plant in Oakland. A third executive, Charles Morehead, pleaded guilty to withholding information regarding fraudulent accounting during the construction of the plant.

Already, three men involved in the plant have been convicted or pleaded guilty to fraud charges in Mississippi, including Richard Hall, Jr., who was recruited by the state to run the plant, which closed three months after it opened in 2004, by which time the state had thrown good money after bad to the tune of $55 million.

Hall has been variously described as a cunning con man, capable of making smart people believe his stories, and as a fall guy for the Facility Group, which left him in a bigger hole than he could get out of. Either way, since his conviction Hall has grown more friendly with federal prosecutors, who have asked that his eight year sentence be reduced as a reward for his cooperation on other aspects of the case.

There’s been no indication Musgrove is a target of federal prosecutors, although the three Georgia executives also have an incentive to cooperate with the feds, leaving the door open to possible future indictments – and certain speculation. Some in the state have questioned the timing of the plea deal, which gets the Facility Group execs off the hook on more serious charges.

After Moultrie pleaded last week, Musgrove issued a statement point out there was no indication of “any quid pro quo” in Moultrie’s plea agreement, and that in any case he wasn’t responsible as governor for the contracts with the Facility Group.